1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to media services and, more specifically, to a method and system for rules based workflow of media services.
2. Discussion of Related Art
An enterprise service bus (ESB) is a software architecture that allows for the performance of complex tasks by a distributed set of middleware services, each service performing a particular component function. The services may cooperate by transferring messages between one another over the bus. The flow of information between services is governed by a workflow. A workflow engine may control and implement the workflow. ESBs may utilize computer networks and web technologies to build the bus and provide for the seamless communication of messages across multiple computing platforms and the execution of the workflow. This distributed approach to the performance of complex tasks allows for enhanced versatility and scalability.
The performance of both the complex task and the component functions may be implemented as web applications, and thus the bus may include the Internet and/or intranets. Each service may be performed by one or more networked servers.
One commercially available implementation of ESB technology may be found within WebSphere, developed and made available by IBM. WebSphere provides a Java-based application environment for building, deploying and managing Internet and intranet web applications.
As digital media objects, such as sound, image and video recordings, are increasingly managed and distributed over ESB architecture, the workflow is tasked with managing not only the exchange of messages but the exchange of the digital media objects. Because digital media objects may be found in a wide variety of forms, the passing of digital media objects between services requires special handling.
For example, a digital image object may have any of a number of image resolutions, color depths, compression methods, compression ratios and file formats. A digital video object may be encoded using any of a number of codecs and compression standards. A digital audio file may have any of a number of bit rates and sampling frequencies and may similarly be encoded using any of a number of encoding and compression standards. The diversity of digital media standards may be represented by the format, which dictates how the media object is encoded, and the transport protocol, which determines how the media can be accessed.
Owing to this wide variety of digital media standards, it is often difficult to pass objects between services when certain services require different standards. Accordingly, when orchestrating a workflow among services, the workflow engine must have intimate knowledge of the particular digital media standards that are passed from one service to another. Digital media contains properties that need to be taken into consideration when building the workflow and care must be taken to ensure that media objects produced by one service may be properly consumed by the next service in the workflow.
When these factors are not properly considered, or when workflow elements are changed without due consideration to how digital media objects may be affected throughout the entire workflow, media mismatch may occur and the workflow may fail.
Accordingly, it may be particularly difficult to change the workflow when new digital media formats are introduced in the production, management and distribution of digital media. As considerable time and cost may be associated with the production of digital assets, the inability to easily pass digital media objects between services in a relatively simple and workflow-independent fashion may be a significant deficiency.